A Distinguished Provincial at Paris | Page 7

about; so it comes to pass
that the best seats are filled at this season with heterogeneous
theatre-goers, never seen at any other time of year, and the house is apt
to look as if it were tapestried with very shabby material. Chatelet had
thought already that this was his opportunity of giving Nais the
amusements which provincials crave most eagerly, and that with very
little expense.
The next morning, the very first morning in Paris, Lucien went to the
Rue Nueve-de-Luxembourg and found that Louise had gone out. She
had gone to make some indispensable purchases, to take counsel of the
mighty and illustrious authorities in the matter of the feminine toilette,
pointed out to her by Chatelet, for she had written to tell the Marquise
d'Espard of her arrival. Mme. de Bargeton possessed the
self-confidence born of a long habit of rule, but she was exceedingly
afraid of appearing to be provincial. She had tact enough to know how
greatly the relations of women among themselves depend upon first
impressions; and though she felt that she was equal to taking her place
at once in such a distinguished set as Mme. de d'Espard's, she felt also
that she stood in need of goodwill at her first entrance into society, and
was resolved, in the first place, that she would leave nothing undone to
secure success. So she felt boundlessly thankful to Chatelet for pointing
out these ways of putting herself in harmony with the fashionable
world.
A singular chance so ordered it that the Marquise was delighted to find
an opportunity of being useful to a connection of her husband's family.
The Marquis d'Espard had withdrawn himself without apparent reason
from society, and ceased to take any active interest in affairs, political
or domestic. His wife, thus left mistress of her actions, felt the need of
the support of public opinion, and was glad to take the Marquis' place
and give her countenance to one of her husband's relations. She meant
to be ostentatiously gracious, so as to put her husband more evidently
in the wrong; and that very day she wrote, "Mme. de Bargeton nee

Negrepelisse" a charming billet, one of the prettily worded
compositions of which time alone can discover the emptiness.
"She was delighted that circumstances had brought a relative, of whom
she had heard, whose acquaintance she had desired to make, into closer
connection with her family. Friendships in Paris were not so solid but
that she longed to find one more to love on earth; and if this might not
be, there would only be one more illusion to bury with the rest. She put
herself entirely at her cousin's disposal. She would have called upon her
if indisposition had not kept her to the house, and she felt that she lay
already under obligations to the cousin who had thought of her."
Lucien, meanwhile, taking his first ramble along the Rue de la Paix and
through the Boulevards, like all newcomers, was much more interested
in the things that he saw than in the people he met. The general effect
of Paris is wholly engrossing at first. The wealth in the shop windows,
the high houses, the streams of traffic, the contrast everywhere between
the last extremes of luxury and want struck him more than anything
else. In his astonishment at the crowds of strange faces, the man of
imaginative temper felt as if he himself had shrunk, as it were,
immensely. A man of any consequence in his native place, where he
cannot go out but he meets with some recognition of his importance at
every step, does not readily accustom himself to the sudden and total
extinction of his consequence. You are somebody in your own country,
in Paris you are nobody. The transition between the first state and the
last should be made gradually, for the too abrupt fall is something like
annihilation. Paris could not fail to be an appalling wilderness for a
young poet, who looked for an echo for all his sentiments, a confidant
for all his thoughts, a soul to share his least sensations.
Lucien had not gone in search of his luggage and his best blue coat; and
painfully conscious of the shabbiness, to say no worse, of his clothes,
he went to Mme. de Bargeton, feeling that she must have returned. He
found the Baron du Chatelet, who carried them both off to dinner at the
Rocher de Cancale. Lucien's head was dizzy with the whirl of Paris, the
Baron was in the carriage, he could say nothing to Louise, but he
squeezed her hand, and she gave a warm response to the mute

confidence.
After dinner Chatelet took his guests to the Vaudeville. Lucien, in his
heart, was not over well pleased to see